In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

I would not normally bring a personal issue here, but I think there is the possibility it may have a long term effect on many other muds.

Threshold RPG's wikipedia entry has recently undergone a lot of vandalism from a bad intentioned, disgruntled ex-player. Unfortunately, this person (who goes by the name Mendaliv on Wikipedia) is a hard core Wikipedia user, so he is well versed in their archaic, acronym heavy rules and has a lot of "friends" (cronies?) to help him with his campaign.

After getting an admin friend to ban pretty much every person that had been productively working on the entry, he recommended it for deletion. That's a pretty sleazy tactic, since now almost none of the people that would be likely to respond in favor of KEEPing it are even allowed to comment. If the only issue here was the deletion of Threshold's entry, I wouldn't be posting here. We have had customers of ours put various entries up related to our worlds and later found out they were deleted. That's how Wikipedia works and we don't concern ourselves with it.

What disturbs me more than our entry being deleted is the all out general attack being made on MUDs in general. If you read the discussion of the deletion request for Threshold, you will find countless statements that various MUD sites are not noteworthy, not good enough to be a source of information, and just not important enough. Yes, MUDs as a hobby are nowhere near as major as they were 10 years ago, but MUDs are a major part of internet and online gaming history. The discussion is here:



In the discussion, numerous Wikipedia members seem to completely discard MUDs as having any historical relevance, and old MUD related sites (TMC, TMS, etc.) are repeatedly deemed meaningless and of no journalistic or informative value. When I read this, I was shocked. Some of these sites were made when the WWW was brand new. Sure, they never did (and still don't) have the polish of giant sites like Massively, Gamespot, 1up, or IGN, but there was a time when these sites (and MUDs in general) were extremely vital, major hubs of information for online gaming and for the internet in general.

Regardless of how popular MUDs are now, there is no doubt they are an important part of internet and gaming history. It is absurd to simply discard them as irrelevant and not noteworthy.

I'm not sure if there is anything we can do about it, but this strikes me as part of a larger, more serious problem for our hobby. I think it is in all of our best interests to fight against the erosion of our historical significance.

Thanks for reading, and once again I am sorry for bringing such a Threshold-specific issue to these forums. I feel this is a threat to the historical significance of MUDs in general, and that affects all of us.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

This may just be an indication of a serious flaw in Wikipedia's design and what will lead to its eventual decline. Citations seem to only be accepted if they are on the internet rather than in printed papers, and some hobbies just aren't big enough not to fall under the axe of some of the Wikipedia people with an agenda.

My biggest concern about this issue is simply that apparently mud sites have no legitimacy, and random people get to determine if something is "popular" enough. I simply have no idea how that is going to play out due to the fact that popularity of all sorts of hobbies waxes and wanes, and who is going to keep the mudding hobby alive enough for Wikipedia?

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Aardwolf was removed in July 2007 as being "not notable", similar arguments given to those I see in your AFD page. In the overall scheme of the internet I suppose it really isn't notable, but in that case 90% of the stuff on Wikipedia needs to go.

Apparently it had been tagged for review for some time but we were not aware. On the same day we were made aware and contacted the appropriate Wikipedia editor, it just happened to be deleted. I'm not big on conspiracy theories, but the timing was all too convenient. Maybe it was an administrative decision along the lines of "I don't want to deal with new information / having to actually verify this so delete it today" or maybe there was more to it. There were plenty of additional third party reviews of Aardwolf on non-traditional MUD sites, but the day we provided the links for them was the day it was suddenly "too late". I even offered to provide some documentation in which Aardwolf was used for a social science experiment in a joint venture with Cornell and DARPA. This was also dismissed as it would be "original research".

From your own AFD, the idea behind reviews written by players count for less is somewhat ridiculous. You can't play a mud for a day (or even a week) "only to review it" and really get a feel for its culture and community.

It seems TMS was also removed from the main Wikipedia page on "MUDS". Re-added it but no time or inclination to spend chasing Wikipedia edits. It is what it is, best advice I can give you is that it's not worth it, move on, unless you want to keep defending your entry over and over and over.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Your story sounds pretty similar to what happened to us. We have the added factor of the person involved spending a month or so getting everyone banned first so they wouldn't even be able to contribute to the AFD discussion.

Honestly, if this was just about Threshold's entry I would even bring it up here or let it concern me. We have had a lot of other things related to our games and our company deleted in the past, and we didn't care at all. That's just the way Wikipedia runs (a small cabal of people basically decide amongst themselves what is "important"), and usually I just ignore it.

From a business standpoint, Wikipedia is irrelevant. I just double checked, and not a single new character creation listed wikipedia as where it heard about one of our games.

But as soon as the discussion of deletion began, there was an all out attack on the significance and relevance of MUDs in general. That is what really got my hackles up. The games I make are important to me, but even more important is the history I have been a part of. If my company had to close its doors some day, I would at least know that I was part of something significant, and that thing (MUDs) would be remembered. But this crusade these folks are on is to eliminate all MUD related stuff as "irrelevent" or "not notable." That's just an outrage in my view. MUDs are very relevant and are a very notable part of internet history.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

I'm going to agree with Lasher here, and really, I think this shows the general decline of Wikipedia. At this rate, when something goes out of style or something bigger comes along, things will keep getting deleted off of Wikipedia unless the entry has a "buddy" that is an editor in there somewhere.

Ultimately, it makes it less of a good source of information and will likely make way for something new. Then Wikipedia can edit itself out of its own entries for "notability" reasons. I had my say and stuck up for mudding in general. I saved a copy for posterity.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Looking quickly at it it seems part of the problem with TMC and TMS as reference is suspicion of "self publication". The listings are usually uploaded by the game's staff members so it is pretty clear it is published by the people running the game.

The problem is probably that the MUD community is not very interesting to most people. When was the last time some big game magazine had an article about MUDs?

You could add ThresholdRPG to though if you haven't.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

I think you are right. The sad thing is, places like Wikipedia aren't supposed to care that MUDs have faded in recent times. The historical significance should be enough. But the truth is, Wikipedia is dominated by a who treat it like their own personal MMO. This request for deletion is like PvP for them.


Thanks. We are there. :)

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

One comment I noticed on your AFD was that there was no way to verify history on sites such as this and TMC. This might help:



I never published this because there isn't a good way to resolve time difference, so the "total votes" without the context of "total time on the site" might not be too meaningful. For example, Aardwolf wasn't listed here until 2003, the other 3 IRE games came after Achaea, etc. It also has a "survorship bias" - muds that have since been removed but would have been in the list based on numbers alone aren't there. It's interesting to browse if nothing else.

Adam opened this site in 2000, so this will at least demonstrate you've been on TMS and consistently ranked for most of that time.

On the other hand, from browsing those AFDs it seems that once an AFD is proposed, any later rejection of it is taken as a personal affront to the value of that editor's existence on the planet and to be avoided at all costs.

Kind of like telling your neighborhood association yard monitor that they are mistaken and the height of your grass is just fine. You might be right, but it's quicker, easier and less likely to result in repeated banging of your head on the nearest wall to just mow the yard than it is to play in their world.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

If you could add that to the AfD, that would be very interesting.

Unfortunately, I cannot add anything, as I was banned in the initial rush of their pre-censorship.

Right now, the administrator BLACK KITE is banning people who vote KEEP and labeling them as "sock puppets" of me. It is a real mockery of their process, when the whole point of an AfD is supposedly to "discuss" whether the article should be retained or not. But if you ban everyone who votes KEEP, what kind of discussion is that?

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Just got blocked for sockpuppetry. Discussion with the admins haven't been very helpful. If I'm not getting outright ignored, I'm being belittled.

I think they've never heard of multiple people being behind one firewall.

I think I'm done with Wikipedia. The articles are far too subjective, and if you don't spend your life there, you can get banned for anything they can dig up.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

I guess I'm pretty down about the incredible immaturity on Wikipedia, and I'm completely disillusioned about what Wikipedia really is. Thus, I assuaged my unhappiness with looking up people in similar situations.



On a more serious note:

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

I added a comment and the reply to it seems to be typical. I had naively at one point thought Wikipedia to be a global encyclopedia, a source of information, sometimes perhaps even a source of information for topics little covered elsewhere.

Now it seems that unless something has mainstream coverage or an academic paper published on it, it is not worth including. To me this just makes Wikipedia a catalog of mainstream references and by that definition can never contain anything groundbreaking or new.

If a computer game magazine that really knows next to nothing about MUDs can be considered a trusted source of information about MUDs but TMC, the #1 MUD site for well over 10 years, cannot, that ends any value Wikipedia has as an authority on MUDs. Unfortunately for the average internet user who wants to learn about MUDs, Google gives Wikipedia authority on pretty much everything and that is the first link they will get.

At the end of the day, Google is the only reason wikipedia matters, period. If they didn't rank Wikipedia so highly for everything we wouldn't be having this discussion, because nobody would care.

The decision on your own listing has clearly already been made. Time to move on.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Agreed. The people collapsing things have already posted to the "Notes to the Closing Admin" rather than the Reviewing Admin.

On a brighter note, it looks like Google is trying to attempt its own competition for Wikipedia and About.com at. I wonder if it'll work out.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

That took longer than expected, the TMS link on the main Wikipedia MUDs listing was removed again.

I guess this means TMS isn't relevant to MUDs either :)

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Well, as someone who has long had a low opinion of Wikipedia due to the "popularity versus fact" and "lack of scholarly review" problems that a user-edited work entails, I'm not surprised. However, the MUD community has hurt itself on two different counts in regard to this issue.

First, a lot of MUD-related articles are written with the intention of promoting games. Promotion is not the same as encyclopedic writing. Some time back, I happened to run across a MUD-related article on Wikipedia and noted that the information was not correct. I clicked the "edit" link and changed it to reflect only information that was undisputed within the MUD community. The article was edited back the next day to read as it had before my edit. I edited it again and once again the same thing happened. I tried rewording my edit to the article. No difference. I made sure to add documentation (none existed in the article) of discussions from here and two other sites which supported my edits. It was changed back again the next day and the edits deleted. I was blasted as a "vandal" by another MUD for changing the article which they claimed "is maintained" by them and only them. In the end, Wikipedia deleted the entire article since there was no documentation to support any of it (remember, the documentation I had posted was continually deleted).

The other problem is the lack of critical standards within the community. Year after year I used to go through every MUD on this page's listings and I can say that 75% of them exagerrate their player base figures. I remember seeing one game that claimed in a forum ad that it had an average pbase of 10-20. I tried it and only once did I see it get more than 10 players on. Most of the time it hovered around 3-4 and at times I was the sole person on the game. And yet, where in the community can such blatant dishonesty be addressed and criticized with effect? Reviews? We know how well those worked.

Back in 2005, I recommended a peer-based award system for MUDs on the old rpimud.com (not a popularity-based one like the weekly voting but one where every game had to choose another game as best in each category like building or staff, etc.). The idea was strongly opposed on the grounds that it was "competition". Mind you, no one opposed the weekly popularity-based voting for rankings on the home page. That would seem a far more likely competition than a peer-based award system. The problem seemed to be the fear of critical review by others. Better to just boast of being "the best" than have someone else look at you and decide that you are (or are not). There exists no real critical review and assessment in the MUD community. Occassionally dishonest claims are opposed by the community but even then to read the arguments that ensue leaves one wondering about the ethical integrity of the community as a whole. There just isn't any system of community policing of standards. I don't mean "every game has to do A, B, and C", I mean the community doesn't stand up and say "We recognize effort" and "We condemn dishonesty". (On a related note, the existing rank voting system on rpimud.com was discovered last year to have been abused and tampered with via cheating by at least four different MU*s; while one of ways they did it might have been accidental, the other was clearly deliberate and likely had significant effect on the weekly vote totals...this is why the voting on the site was discontinued and will be completely reworked on rpmud.net)

Staff-based reviews and a peer-based award system are two of the things that the new rpmud.net site is considering. For some time now the Operating Committee has been working on details of both and some of our staff have been looking over a variety of RP-centric MU*s in preparation for adding a review section. We hope that with our site we can try and institutionalize some critical standards of review and recognition within the community that are merit-based and as objective as we can make them. But admittedly, the community hasn't always stepped up to the plate in the past. We held our elections for THREE seats on the Committee and only ONE game took the time to nominate a candidate.

While Wikipedia is a less-than-reliable encyclopedic source, the MU* community also needs to make more effort toward regulating itself as a responsible, dedicated group of specialists (in this case, specializing in the creation and operation of text-based online games). I've seen groups, including those comprised entirely of hobbyists, of all sorts be it filmmakers, history buffs, performers, and writers work together to support and recognize one another on the basis of merit and to encourage and enforce standards of quality whereever possible. Maybe it's time the MU* community did the same. Then Wikipedia's response would be as unwarranted as its information is often inaccurate.

Take care,

Jason aka Falco

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

One option is to include your own result for google searches and then promote them so they are the first link people see as opposed to wikipedia, this goes for anything really

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

My god. This crusade of theirs gets worse at every moment. It turns out it is exactly as I feared. There is a group of people that have some kind of weird vendetta against the historical significance of MUDs in general.

At this point, I have no idea what we can possibly do about it.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

There's exactly as much critical review and assessment in the MUD community as people are inclined to give. The implied thread running through your post is that you think there should be a single source of reviews that the MUD community (which I don't believe exists as a representative of MUD players anyway) turns to. But why? Is there a single source of reviews for books? For music? For movies? For non-MUD games? No.

The difference with text MUDs is that we're such a niche hobby that there's little to be gained for people in professionally reviewing us.

--matt

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Quoted for truth.

It always cracks me up that the entry for Superman has an entry about the same length as the entry for Plato.

Unfortunately, I suspect little can be done unless you can create enough of a stink that it gets the attention of someone at Wikipedia, and that's not going to be easy. :(

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Yeah, there are a zillion articles about various fictional entities and worlds. Obscure comic book characters have pages even if they haven't had a comic released in 10-20 years and maybe 12 people still read about them. And that's ok since Marvel or DC are huge.

But to claim the entire MUDding hobby is irrelevant and not notable? That is what ticks me off more than anything.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

The problem is that MUDs are simply not interesting to many people anymore. What value is it to have an article in an encyclopedia about some MUD X? Very little to most people outside the MUD community.

To have an article about the MUD field itself is probably more interesting to a wider audience though, and such article should reach notability because it is mentioned in many independent .

Edit: It is pretty weird in a way. If you look at the entry for MXP it probably isn't seen as notable, because the only reference come from the subject itself. To get it notable someone would have to write a book/article referencing it, which means that author would read about MXP on the official website anyway.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Which appears to be absolutely none. With that level of critical review, it can justifably be said that there is no relevance to MU*s, since apparently even those in the field don't give a care about it enough to try.

No such implied thread in my post exists. I don't believe nor did I ever state or suggest that there should be a single source of reviews. However, it would help if there were at least one source of objective, critical and comparative reviews in the community. At present there is not one. Zero, nada, nil, zilch.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

There are articles that have mentioned and talked about MUDs. They would constitute legitimate sources to validate some information on MUDs. As for individual MUDs, I would have to agree with Wikipedia that there aren't many if any with relevance worthy of encyclopedic note. The biggest ones tend to be some of the most lackluster creations and least noteworthy in regard to innovation and concept while the most cutting-edge and innovative ones are small and unnoticed by the community itself to say nothing of the larger world.

But that's not wikipedia or any encyclopedia's fault. That's the nature of an outdated system with marginal appeal which has done little or nothing within its own community to bring attention to itself or create any semblance of respectability as a medium. When I attempted to trace the exact origin of the term RPI I found that no one in the community had ever bothered to document anything regarding its development and very little about the development of the first RPIs. Those that knew have largely passed out of the community and disappeared without imparting their knowledge upon others. People in the community will write endless pages of drivel about what they RP'd last Friday but nothing about the nature of RP and MUDs themselves. Finding individuals within the community with an interest in the field of MU*s (beyond code) is like finding Jeopardy! contestants on the short bus.

One of these days I'll resume my article on the history of RPIs but the reason I've yet to finish it is because of the lack of source material that I as a historian can legitimately confirm for citation purposes. It'd be a horrible article, professionally, and more of a deduction than a historical analysis. But historical writing aside, there's nothing within the community to document or reference from either. Wikipedia questioned the legitimacy of sites like TMS and TMC as source material and rightly so. This site's been around for how long? In all that time, nothing here has been produced of any merit to legitimately document anything beside the names of some games (and because the site doesn't actually do the research but allows the games and players to do the postings, what is posted is unconfirmed and thus unreliable as a source).

Because he brought it up and for no other reason, I looked at the Wikipedia article on Threshold. As far as legitimate encyclopedic information, the article really doesn't contain any beyond the first sentence. Everything afterwards is not written in the form of an encyclopedic article. The entire "Gameplay" section is totally inappropriate, "Business Model" information is irrelevant to the article as are the documented sources in the context in which they're used. Asking the question of what significance warrants the inclusion of this subject, there's nothing that distinguishes it from millions of potential articles on mundane things ranging from the gas station on the local Main Street to the fourteenth John Smith in the local telephone directory. That's not meant as an insult to Threshold or any other MU*. It's simply a matter of encyclopedic relevance.

As for the legitimacy of TMS, like I said, there's nothing on this site of value as a documentable source. Player reviews are worthless since they don't constitute scholarly works and aren't really informed critiques as much as they are fanboys fawning and flamers bitching. A search engine does nothing for the purpose of encyclopedic information beyond what little is in the MU* profiles but even then the information is not researched or verified. The rankings are meaningless since they constitute no legitimate critical assessment nor do they represent anything beyond just how many drones clicked a button. The forums themselves are practically devoid of any referenceable material and even then the only time I found them suitable for reference was to point out the existance of disagreement within the community regarding the term RPI (but not a definition of the term itself, just evidence that there was disagreeement).

Like I said, maybe it's a wake-up call to the community that if they want their field taken seriously they should consider investing within the community and within the subject itself. That is, if it isn't already too late.

Take care,

Jason

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

A few years ago, they deleted LegendMUD's wiki page as well. It was nowhere near an advertisement nor was it based on any information from TMS or TMC, but those were the reasons given. I gave up arguing about it, even after pointing out several references to LegendMUD on other wiki pages such as Raph Koster's, and The Story About a Tree.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Hello,

As you may have noticed, we at Wikipedia have recently noticed your bid to not have this deleted (we traced it to this thread), and as always when something like this has occurred have taken measures to ensure that accounts that we assume to be coming from here are likely to be discounted in the final judgment on the fate of the article itself. You can still save the article to your userspace and work on it there, and then re-enter it into the mainspace (article space) when you feel it is ready.

If you feel comfortable discussing this on-Wiki with me then my username is the same as here, Neurolysis. Note that I understand your concern at the deletion of the article, but putting all of the blame on some sort of cabal or 'minions' of sorts is a little nonsensical and is a false conspiracy. Perhaps what you are saying about the nominator is correct, I am not one to judge, but usually when something comes up like this it turns out it is completely different to how it looks on the surface.

Anyway, I am here to answer any questions you may wish to ask about the discussion that you may be uncomfortable asking on Wiki. We do not want to alienate prospective editors, and nor do we want to delete good articles.

As a note, your genre's noteworthiness is not being questioned. We already have an article on it, and that is not up for deletion - and neither does it seem that it should be.

As it generally goes, canvassing like this only makes the article more likely to be deleted, as a lot of the keep votes have to be discounted, and false positives may therefore occur due to the suspicious behavior.

There are a lot of people leaning on the keep side of things - there is no conspiracy. I'd say the debate is somewhat balanced, if perhaps tipping a little on the delete side of things, but maybe not enough for deletion - anyway, I certainly won't be the one closing it. The matter of fact is that creating a new account just to vote will not work, and will have the adverse affect than you intend.

Any questions you want to ask about the deletion process, what people mean by their arguments or what you could do to improve the article can either be asked here or at my talk page, or you can find me with the same handle at #wikipedia-en and ##neurolysis on irc.freenode.net.

Thanks,

- Chris

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

As a member of this community (if you assume "lurking" for many years a member) this sort of thing does generally concern me.

I've found that outside the web the number of people that have knowledge on, or know about MUDs in general, specifically or just their present or past existance is fairly small (I only get about a 50% confirmation success rate from people I think would know of their existance). Knowledge of MUDs and what they can offer as an entertainment platform is definately undervalued in our respective societies. I attribute this mostly to the fact that it is hobbiest and that the commercial ventures are limited compared to the non-commercial ventures (this is important because in most industries and hobbies it is the commercial ventures that actually drive advertisement and thus recognition outside of the hobby's community). So I'm always looking for ways and interested in attempting to expose Mudding in general, both altruistically and because I know how low the chances of success (i.e. getting *any* players) will be eventually if I create and get to a playing point any game of my own.

However, I have to agree to some degree (although not the method, if this really is the method) with Wikipedia's decision. This is a common pattern in history, and about the only one that doesn't have the pattern's bais; those that have the power (or the victors for the more common phrase) write history. Wikipedia isn't any more a group of people that exist "for the common" good than anything else, but is probably more so than even this site. They do however hold a fairly substantial chunk of power in the "internet culture's" source of information, and thus can and will manipulate information to their own ends. This isn't "bad" or "evil", it's just how the world works. We aren't dealing with some emotionless automatons, we're dealing with a group of humans. And groups are almost always worse in this respect than individuals (although I also willingly field the idea that any automaton will still have at least a diluted sense of the goals an aims of it's creator). So in general Wikipedia is acting, as an abstract creature, the way it is supposed to even if we don't like it because we never seem to see it support our personal goals, ambitions or wishes.

More specifically though, I agree with their decision on the basis that I do not think that any specific MUD, commercial or otherwise should have it's own article on Wikipedia. An article or articles on MUDs in general or listing of historicaly significant MUDs (and that's dangerous enough as it is, and filled with its own problems) is enough. Once you get into the business of listing individual MUDs, you're simply turning it into an advertisement platform which isn't supposed to be its function. These events may not have actually conspired the deletion of any website or individual MUDs' page, but instead just brought it to the attention and spurred on it's eventual deletion. For a site like TMS, or a specific MUD, I don't think an article needs to exist; if someone wants to know about these sites they can actually *visit* them and find out. So having a note or link pointing to them in the "super" articles should be sufficient. If you want more specific information about individual MUDs, but you don't want to try and wade through a website that is there for promotion of the game (like most game websites), a *separate* source of information should be made available and policed accordingly by those who control it. We have this with the MU* Wiki, and its rules and goals will no doubt be "bad" for some individuals as well, which means those people should start something more specific to their own goals. Wikipedia, like an encyclopedia should be a starting point for information, and a place where you *leave* to follow up and verify the information presented (and I'm aware that this rarely happens for most visitors, but that shouldn't be a valid reason for any dilution of the information with more information that will make it no longer a good condensed "first look").

As for TMS and TMC. I love these sites. I visit TMS every day and try to visit TMC as often as I have time for (TMC used to be my go-to, but TMS took over that role when I discovered it shortly after its opening). They serve as my primary source for finding a game that I think I might like to play. But they have a critical flaw, mentioned by an earlier post but not as explored as I might have hoped. They serve one purpose, and are in the unfortunate (from this perspective) position of maintaining the majority traffic for those looking to educate or learn about MUDs. The purpose they serve is that they are primarilly a free advertising platform for MUDs and players to connect to other MUDs and players. Like a lot of early websites they are little proto-social-networking sites that haven't taken on the definition and efficiency (and thus would lose a lot of other values if they did, so I'm not suggesting they do) of newer, generalized, highly successful social-networking sites. They don't do much of anything else very well (something quickly apparent if you ever look at the "articles" section of this site), so if you're looking for information on MUDs in general, MUD concepts, how to play MUDs, looking for MUD resources/content/downloads, looking to find a MUD based on non-biased information (they try to but this is very difficult to achieve) resources for MUD development and creation (something any hobby definately needs), they are very much *not* set up for this purpose at all. I've seen sites attempt to fill these voids, but I don't know as they too well simply because of the lack of traffic (and are frequently set up yet another advertising scheme for a specific MUD, and thus become very agenda based--as I recall this was one of the major concerns when Lasher took over TMS, and so far he's done an admiral job of putting any and all fears of that to death); TMS and TMC hold the traffic market.

---Continued in next post because I'm a tard and write too much when I only intended a single paragraph. Good luck to me getting anyone to actually read all this crap--

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

So what is the community to do? First forget about Wikipedia as mentioned. It isn't and should not be used as an advertising platform or primary resource location for MUDs, specific MUDs, or the mudding community. Furthermore, you don't want it to be since it isn't under our control.

But what else? One of the earlier posts was flirting with it. It would take a social revolution which is hard, and usually next to impossible. But we have to change our state of action. Players and development/administration resources are so rare compared to the number of MUDs that advertising is paramount to the community, and that I think is very damaging (but unlikely to change). This advertising (I've tried it myself) is actually pretty useless as it has very poor results because of the conditions that created it in the first place. Ideally this would change, but it will not and shouldn't anyway (that would significantly decrease the traffic to these two sites). We basically need to--as a community--create a resource where all of those above items and more can be found quickly, easily, properly, unbiasedly (quite possibly a contradiction). This website needs to have a very good design who's purpose becomes immediately clear. While TMS and TMC have some of these elements that it would need, it is not their primary focus. The layout of the site makes it very clear what *is* their primary focus, and so those elements are not well developed at all in both a content sense or a site layout sense. I thought that the MU*Wiki might help in this regard, but Wikis just are *not* designed for that purpose, so it serves a role only as a catalog of information that is easy to use if you're looking for something specific; it doesn't have the website design and layout that it would need for this venture.

TMS I don't think should spearhead this effort, mostly because it doesn't need to. It does just fine doing what it does I think. The best chance might be actually having TMC upgrade it's purpose and existance (along with a much needed website reconstruction), as it has a good traffic flow, but is the "lesser" of the two sites attempting to do close to the same thing. Let TMS focus on forums, player and mud advertising, reviews and rankings. TMC can retain these features, but should not focus on them. Let the MU* Wiki focus on a general encyclopedic listing of MUDs and MUD terms, concepts and other information someone coming across a name or term would want quick basic information on. TMC can link back and forth between these items and information if the owners cooperated. I say that TMC should do so, simply because we know how a non-established venture would fair in this market as it currently is.

Finally, mentioned again and again and again on these forums is the attempt to advertise *outside* of the community. Adverts inside don't do much good. Generating traffic and attention outside is what we need. The commercial ventures will naturally spearhead this activity simply because they are the ones with the resources to do so, and the business plans that necessitate it. They obviously shouldn't be pressured or given special requests to do charity work for the rest of the community. We'll get enough kickback off of their efforts naturally that we should be happy with what they have done and continue to do naturally. It's the "non-commercial" (and I know this isn't true in it's strictest sense) community that should attempt to do more leg-work in this regard, including this site, TMC, MU* Wiki, individual MUDs and any commercial MUDs that feel it is in their best interest to do so that can budget for it. This doesn't necessarily mean spending money, although sometimes that is necessary. But hitting up local universities with a butt-load of fliers can go a long way. Learning how to work it into fun side-projects of class plans for those of you that are TAs or teachers of appropriately aged canidates (late-highschool and primarilly upper education). Involving friends and family; using it as a learning tool for our children, or a social opportunity alternative to going out and drinking again. Holding community gaming events, equviliant to LAN parties where you do a few games, lead up to it and introduce a specific MUD with a non-character developing event (like an instant setup PK environment, or other competition). I'm not saying these are necessarilly good ideas, but just that there are ways that can be explored for free.

I don't really have a good conclusion at this point so that's that, and sorry for partially redirecting the thread; I mean no disrespect to the original posters.

-Tezcatlipoca

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

I understand Wikipedia's position on this, but there is a fine line between "canvassing" and notifying MUD players on a MUD forum that they may be interested in the article, particularly with the Wikipedia trend of removing a number of MUDs over the past couple of years.

It seems somewhat of a no-win situation - "not enough MUD hobbyists are active here to verify 'authority' for MUD sites, but if you point out the issue on a forum where they will be, you are canvassing."

I am admittedly biased in this, so remove Topmudsites from the equation. My main concern is not the listing of any individual mud (my own long since removed from Wikipedia) but the notion that TMC (and similar) are not considered authorities on MUDs. They are authorities on MUDs.

Some MUD players may have discovered the genre by the occasional mainstream reference, but no active MUD player is going to Computer Game Weekly or Gamespot for information about MUDS, they are going to the Mud Connector, MudBytes, previously MudMagic and all the other niche MUD sites. The very fact that these are the sites MUD players go to are the same reason MUD owners have focused on their visibility on those sites rather than a mainstream press that doesn't care.

So now we're in the situation where, for example, Mudconnector which has been around for well over 15 years is not considered authoritative for MUD information and history but a game magazine that heard about MUDs last week and writes an overview on them this week, is. It also does not bode well for most other MUDs that will have to rely on their "references" on MUD sites as their own listings come up for review over time. Bottom line seems to be that "notability" comes down to chance and whether or not a mainstream publication noticed you while sites that have focused exclusively on MUDs for over a decade are discarded.

You have to at least understand why those involved with MUDs (and we're a passionate group) would be frustrated by this?

Either way, thanks for dropping by and giving us a look at this from the other side. It's appreciated.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Here's a phrase that probably would have helped you; "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar".

What does it mean? Don't go accusing people of "breaking the rules" and being "vandals" just because they don't agree with you. Especially after several people make it clear that you are the one breaking the rules. If you had been polite and asked for help instead of being abusive, your article might not be in trouble now.

Plus, running home to your favorite forums and beating the war drum is a particularly lame response. If you'd taken the effort to read Wikipedia's policies as you require others to read Threshold's, you would not be in this situation.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

And here was me starting to believe that whether or not the article stayed was about the content and notability.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

And you probably shouldn't stick your hand in a hornet's nest to acquire hunny. Especially if you don't need it or care about it it all.

Take note blair that your post and account don't automatically get deleted here even if we do jump on you for a bit of trolling.

I agree with this part, if it is indeed true. Except for the article being in trouble part. I still feel that while its existance was terminal, its execution date was probably move way up by someone with a hard-on for its demise. Must feel pretty good.

Does it seem odd that some of Wikipedia's problems with notability and reliability can be applied to themselves? After all, anyone can create and edit information on their site, which is one of the key points about discounting TMC and TMS. I assume at this point that they have a sufficiently large staff of "offically accredited" editor(s) that police the millions of articles on their site to make sure all of this "free form" posting and constant changing of articles is legit. It probably is sufficient to prevent rampant authoring of important medical information by uneducated 24 year olds from kentucky, and definately not promote them to administrators or even editors.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Thanks for proving my point about Wikipedia.

Don't tick off the people with power because they're allowed to ignore all the Wikipedia rules as being friendly to newbies- people who don't know every single rule about Wikipedia- and the multiple places where it says not to delete for personal reasons.

It's very apparent that Threshold is being removed because one editor ran to all his friends because he did not like how someone was speaking to him. Yet accounts are being banned left and right for sockpuppeting and meatpuppeting. Anyone speaking up for the entry to stay has been banned, ridiculed or outright dismissed. It's very clearly a personal vendetta now, and this meatpuppeting post clearly shows that this is so. We now have two posts from Wikipedia staff. One was actually very encouraging. The other one was nothing more than "Nyah, nyah, got you deleted because you tickeded me and my friends off!"

My only real disappointment in all this is that Wikipedia's detractors, such as Colbert and muiltple other blogs, are right. I had thought they were just rabble-rousing, but after being a victim of what other people have posted about, I see that Wikipedia really isn't what they claim to be. You can claim that it's not the fault of Wikipedia, but the system is flawed when the people with the power to ban others and campaign against small entries do not even have to follow Wikipedia's own rules and there's no one there to stop them.

Threshold's entry is doomed because one editor managed to anger the wrong person, not for notability reasons or anything based on guidelines and policies.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Jeez... typical Wikipedia bull. You can't get an article without media coverage. And you can't get media coverage without spending a ton of money. Apply transitivity to it- you can't get an article without spending a lot of money. So Wikipedia is all about who has money.

I guess it's the same as anywhere else though. Money is everything.

We need to band together and get something published.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

I agree with you partially on this. I think it's hard to make a firm and true ruling on this simply because then do all MMOs fall under just a general MMO entry and shouldn't have their own entries. If they should be able to keep it, do they get to keep it on the virtue of just being bigger even the ones that have gone out of business? It's very obvious that many, many hours have been put into EQ, WoW, WAR and even some of the defunct games. Darkness Falls even has a Wikipedia entry, and it was shut down by Mythic two years ago. I, however, would really like to be able to read more about it since it's pretty vital to Dark Age of Camelot, one of the more successful MMOs.

I guess I've never really thought of it as an advertisement for a game. It's doubtful that someone will find us on Wikipedia and then decide to play. It's much more likely that someone hears about us and tries to look us up on Wikipedia for more information. That's how Wikipedia used to work for me. I'd want to know about something I hear on TV or on the radio, and I'd type it in to see what I could find out about it. Sometimes I don't do anything with that information except to say, "Wow, cool." Other times, it leads me down to coding a new area or a new system.

We keep track of how people get to Threshold, and no one has ever entered Wikipedia as where they heard about it. There is so much on Wikipedia that I'm unsure how one would use it to advertise. (I'm sure there are ways. I just haven't come up with one yet.)

Anyway, it could very well be that I'm mistaken in what Wikipedia's all about. Maybe people use it very differently than I do. I had always been under the assumption that the more you can find out on Wikipedia, the more likely that it will keep growing. If, however, things that have faded out of the mainstream need to go, then so be it. It's less like an encyclopedia and more like something to keep track of modern and popular trends. (Though, I have to say that the guidelines and policies strongly suggest against this phenomenon.)

In the end, it's true that the people who work the hardest on Wikipedia get to shape what it is, so maybe it's just time to revise the guidelines and policies to reflect the current expectations and culture of Wikipedia.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Another problem is that Wikipedia only accepts internet published articles, and many of those sites have been deemed "unreliable" or "self-published". (At least this is what's occurring in on the entry being discussed.) Newspaper articles and magazine articles don't count unless you can find them on the internet. Many, many academic papers are not published on the internet either. I know that Threshold's been in a few newspapers, and we've gotten at least 3 students who found us because they were researching online communities. These papers got published, but who knows where. They weren't uploaded since some of them were written back as far as 1997.

It does seem to be about money, but that kind of stinks!

(Yes, I realize I'm totally obsessing. I'll wrap my mind around it soon and move on.)

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Directly, you could be right. For a game like this it might not be useful advertising, but probably still advertising (then again, is anything that contains access information not advertising?). For other games or products it might be more useful. But one way it does help is in an indirect way. As someone mentioned Wikipedia is heavily traversed by google bots. If you can get your link in wikipedia, the more links the better, and the more associated with common related search terms, the better your SEO rating on google searches. Which will increase clickthroughs to your site by ranking you higher in google lists.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Ah, true that. But people find Threshold by searching for roleplay-enforced or online games. They usually hit TMS or TMC long before they ever find our Wiki entry. The Wiki entry seems most popular with friends or families who can't figure out exactly what it is that we do with Threshold. They look at the entry and figure it out. (Please be aware that the current entry has been chopped down to basically nothing now, and most of the people who know anything about the game has been banned. Also, it's been put in a protected status so only certain people can edit certain parts. Don't know how we got put on protected status when we're supposed to be not noteworthy.)

Though, I have to say, I'm much happier to have this ultimately minor AfD problem than an anti-AfD problem:

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

I once got a message for putting a link in a page that Wikipedia uses NOFOLLOW tags to keep their links from enhancing your pagerank.

The best ever plan I ever saw for advertising on Wikipedia was bribing an established editor or two; some of those hard-core wikinerds who do nothing else, so they're dirt poor. :D

It's kind of like hiring an attorney I suppose; they know the law and how to interpret it to argue their case.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Completely incorrect. Wikipedia accepts citations from books, newspapers, websites... all kinds of places, as long as the source is reliable.

I can understand that people are upset, so I will take some time explaining one thing at a time (which might take a while, I have a ton of coursework to do):

Do not be afraid to name names, or I cannot help in achieving transparency.

It isn't a matter of 'not being good enough', it is a matter of 'not being reliable'. If you are the administrator of a site dedicated to MUDs, your fans love them and you know they want to hear nothing more than you write about them, then you are likely to be going to write about them from a biased point of view. This is not reliable. This is therefore inappropriate.

Again, incorrect. I have never seen a published entry removed simply for being in a non-digital format. Actually, I have, but the editor was warned shortly after, and reverted.

Whilst I see your motive for saying such a thing, it is highly ignorant to say that a 'cabal' decides what is going on. Everyone on Wikipedia thinks there is a cabal too, so there more than likely isn't one at all. I am frequently a participant in deletion discussions, and help to decide the final outcome of the debate, but if there is a cabal I have certainly not recieved my honorary membership as of yet. (Lost in the post, maybe)

Not so. We have deletion reviews every day, and a lot of the time the community decides to overturn the final decision.

We have, actually, the problem is that we can't see what is going on behind an IP address - could be a whole school, and we do get that all the time. It's all a matter of perception.

The problem here is that notability and verifiability usually come hand in hand.

We have a policy on ownership, and that policy is this - it cannot and will not be tolerated on Wikipedia. If you see it happening, you should report it to an administrator.

That's exactly the antonym of what you should be thinking about. The question is are there multiple sources of reviews for these?

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Unless you have some hard proof this is possible, it probably isn't a good direction to take the thread in.

There seems to be enough overview and monitoring of edits on Wikipedia that this would be difficult unless an entire group of admins and higher were in on it. I'd be surprised if it hasn't happen ever, but I'd also be very surprised if it is common.

The challenge seems to be more when something is borderline and personalities come into it. It isn't reasonable to expect something the size of Wikipedia to understand the nuances of every niche on the internet so they have to rely on standard reference sources.

Unfortunately, that just doesn't work for MUDs. What we all know to be "authority" sites for MUDs are not classic sources of authority for Wikipedia in general and we're not going to change that.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

This has been my experience in the current AfD discussion. Citations have been removed or discredited if there was no link. One editor says that the burden falls upon us to produce it. When one of the citations finally came back online, it was stated to be too insignificant. While it may be true that Wikipedia accepts citations from books, newpapers, websites, etc. it hasn't been true in this case.

Nizevyn was banned for being a sockpuppet. When it was discovered he couldn't really possibly be a sockpuppet, he was reduced to being a meatpuppet.

A request was also put in to ban Theblog for being a sockpuppet. He managed to fight it off somehow. I'd contact him and ask him how, but since I'm banned for being a sock/meat/spaghetti puppet, I can't really contact him.

I was banned for sockpuppeting, meatpuppeting, and posting in collusion. Pick one. I'm not sure which one they finally settled on. Requests for unbanning were met with hostility, aggression, and outright insults.

That would kind of make it so that any magazine or online forum dedicated to gaming unreliable. The people who are involved in gaming love games. They publish things about games. They review the games they play. Wouldn't that translate to movies as well then? If you get written up by someone who is a movie fan, would that mean that it's unreliable? Movies, comic books, video games... there's more volume in what people write about these but as a whole genre, not individuals.

Citations are removed, not the entire entry. Problem is that if you remove all the citations, then you can rock the entry for notability. And... what if your citations are in mostly digital format? If they're removed and the link breaks, what do you do then? I always assumed that's why Wikipedia has the notability clause written the way it does, so things do not have to keep proving its notability over and over. Otherwise, when something is no longer popular or doesn't have a ton of money behind it, does it just disappear?

Here's the problem. While it may not be a cabal, you only need a few editors and administrators teaming up against a casual editor for the casual editor(s) to be bullied out of existence. When you have no idea who to turn to for help against that group and have no idea how big the group even is, you're done. You have no recourse. If you read the following link that I'm posting, you will see that many of the things that happened to him are mirrors of what happened during the Threshold AfD discussion, so while you may not be a part of the "cabal", they do form and rally.




Sorry, I was being sarcastic there. I did get unidentified as a sockpuppet and moved to the meatpuppet category instead. Maybe they've never heard of two people in the same household caring about the same thing before. (That was sarcasm again!)

The point is that there are multiple sources for these already. :) They're just being discredited as notability sources.

Anyway, please don't take offense to the somewhat flippant tone of this post. I'm only trying to make light of it since I don't really think there's anything else I CAN do about it. So, I'm wallowing in it until I get over it.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

I was one of those who were blocked/banned from Wikipedia for trying to edit the article. I was banned by Black Kite (like every other person who was banned for working on this article) after editing once, and undoing edits of the person who put the article up for deletion, Mendaliv.

What is frustrating and annoying to me, is that Cambios gets slapped down partly for conflict of interest. Yet Mendaliv, who on his own userpage, claims to have played Threshold at one point or another. I fail to see how that cannot be a conflict of interest, him being a former player(possibly) and not only dissecting the original article from the quantity and quality of information down to the small thing that it is now, but also putting it up for deletion.

Others that irk me, are people like Greg Douglas, who wrote an extremely thoughtful and well put post, have their things removed and declared as being meat/sockpuppets. Below is a copy of the post written by Mr. Douglas, which Black Kite so thoughtfully deleted when he was banning both Kalimina and Greg Douglas.
NOTABILITY:
, , , , , and either are or were at some time major, reliable sources for online gaming news, reviews, and information. The fact that some of them no longer exist or are not as famous as they once were does not eliminate the fact that they are . They definitely establish . Regarding "Reliable", specifically states: "Sources may encompass published works in all forms and media." This means printed or online media, even if they are out of print or are now offline are still reliable sources.
The page also states (): "Notability is not temporary: If a subject has met the general notability guideline, there is no need to show continual coverage or interest in the topic."
1) The numerous sources already listed clearly establish that Threshold RPG was AT LEAST notable at one time, if not still notable. The sources themselves were notable at one time (and some are still notable) as well. Computer Games Magazine finally got itself back online, and one of their of Threshold is now back as well.
2) Threshold already met the notability standard a few years ago when a request for deletion was made and rejected. It does not have to continually meet this standard every few years when someone decides to go on a crusade against MUDs in general or Threshold specifically.
3) Threshold is certainly one of the most significant games in the history of MUDs. That is established by the multitude of references and awards from within that industry. That has been established very clearly with citations to countless MUD/MMO related web sites and print media. It has won numerous awards, it is over 12 years old, and it is possibly the only commercial enforced RP MUD/MMO ever. If Threshold doesn't meet , then virtually the entire MUD hobby is not either. It would be patently absurd to argue the MUD hobby in its entirety is not notable. There was a time when MUDs were bigger than the WWW. There was time when MUDs were one of the driving forces behind the popularity of Linux and the evolution of open source software.
NOTABILITY IS *NOT* THE CONTROLLING ISSUE FOR DELETION:
Notability is sometimes a factor, but it is definitely not the only or most important factor when examining whether an article should be deleted. There are significant arguments throughout Wikipedia policy that non-notability should not be cause for deleting an article:

1) Notability is not specifically stated in the .
2)
Valid content is deleted: The recent fundraising page says, "Imagine a world in which every person has free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." We are not doing that, indeed we are actively preventing that, if we are deleting articles solely due to their obscurity. "Detailed obscure topics hurt no-one because it's pretty hard to find them by accident, and Wikipedia isn't paper" (from Wikipedia:Importance). Further, currently obscure, or seemingly obscure, subjects may garner more popular interest at a later date. In such a case, deleted articles will constitute a loss of valuable (and perhaps, in the transitory world of the internet, irreproducible) information.
That last point is especially compelling here. The "transitory world of the internet" has indeed rendered some of the sources "irreproducable." Deleting the Threshold entry just contributes to that tragedy.
3)
Obscure content isn't harmful: Wikipedia is not paper and (practically) has no size limits, and so should include "everything" that fits within its other criteria. There is room for articles on any and every verifiable subject. There is no harm in including an obscure topic, because if it is truly non-notable, people simply won't search for it or link to it. It will not create a significant server load as such.
For these reasons, the reasons already stated by numerous other people here, and many additional reasons I have not gone into (I've written a book already), the Threshold entry should be KEPT. () 01:22, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Neurolysis: I understand you are a part of Wikipedia, care about it, and as such do not want to think it is run by a cabal of borderline internet-gangsters who do absolutely anything they want and bully "outsiders." But if you objectively look at the situation, it is obvious that is the case.

First, it is widely known that an extremely small number of Wikipedia editors do the majority of the editing. , founder of Wikipedia, a group of 1400 editors are responsible for 74% of the content and edits.

Second, look at that post from "blair." That reveals the sick truth of the matter. If we'd been "nicer" to him and his cronies, our article wouldn't be in trouble. Put aside for the moment that "blair" is saying people who spent the last 4+ years working on and editing the Threshold entry should have been all rainbows and butterflies when a random person shows up and starts gutting the article, removing 75% of the content, and from the get-go questions its notability and general worth as an article. The problem is people like "blair", "Mendaliv", "Black Kite", and others seem to think they are the Lords and Ladies of Wikipedia, and the peasantry should bow down and worship them whenever they appear. That kind of garbage is not what Wikipedia is supposed to be about.

Third, look at how the situation played out. Mendaliv shows up and starts gutting the article. The people who worked on it for 4 years objected, and restored information. But while restoring, they were also tracking down better citations and references. If Mendaliv's goal had truly been to improve the entry, then he would have let people KNOWLEDGEABLE about the topic continue. But instead, every time someone added back a section, with better references, it would get removed again and the person would get accused of "edit warring."

Over a period of weeks, Mendaliv would continually poke and prod at people, systematically undoing or removing anything they added or improved, and when they added it back, get his buddy Black Kite (a Wiki administrator) to ban them. If anyone else from the Threshold or MUD community decided to make an account to try and help out with improving the listing, Black Kite would ban them as "sockpuppets" or "meatpuppets."

Then, once they had just about everyone banned who was actively editing (in a positive way) the article on Threshold, they moved in with the AfD. There is NO WAY that timing was a coincidence. They waited until they had people most likely to make cogent arguments to KEEP it banned, and then proposed the AfD. That right there should be plenty proof that they never had a positive motive from the beginning, and that they were indeed acting like a "cabal."

Fourth, look at the AfD itself. Systematically, people who voted to KEEP were either banned as sockpuppets, flagged as accounts that rarely post on Wikipedia, or their EXTREMELY ON POINT AND VALID ARGUMENTS were moved to a crossed out box that was shifted to the bottom of the page and hidden. People I have known for 10+ years were accused of being sockpuppets of me, which is not only ridiculous but pointless since at that time I was banned and couldn't post on the AfD anyway. How can someone be a sockpuppet of someone else if the first person isn't even able to post?

I understand the need to deal with people who might make multiple accounts just to stuff the voting box, but go to that AfD and actually read what was posted by these supposed sockpuppets. The arguments made were extremely valid. Examples of things that were pointed out (with direct links to the policies and rules on Wikipedia)

1) TMC, TMS, GameCommandos, TMJ, and other sites are indeed legitimate historical sites for MUDs. Examples and citations were given, but then removed or dismissed out of hand.

2) .

3) .

4) Donathin made a detailed argument about the historical significance of TMC, but at one point he was accused of sockpuppetry and his comment was removed. I believe it got restored eventually, but I am not sure as I haven't been back to the page in a while.

5) Donathin specifically asked for an explanation of what these "people" would need as proof that TMC/TMS were reliable sources about MUDs, and Mendaliv replied "the above comment has no bearing on this discussion, and probably should be moved to the talk page." Wow. Just wow.

6) Donathin provided information where Richard Bartle verified the utility and reputation of TMC, but they simply dismiss that as well. And then Crossmr adds this totally absurd comment: "Even if you can establish that mudconnector is reliable you need to establish how many people are actually seeing it to make a shot at it conferring notability." So its not just RELIABILITY that has to be established, but current POPULARITY, eh? Ridiculous.

7) .

8) : "Detailed obscure topics hurt no-one because it's pretty hard to find them by accident, and Wikipedia isn't paper"

9) : "Wikipedia is not paper and (practically) has no size limits, and so should include "everything" that fits within its other criteria. There is room for articles on any and every verifiable subject. There is no harm in including an obscure topic, because if it is truly non-notable, people simply won't search for it or link to it. It will not create a significant server load as such.''

Those are all extremely good and important points that should be made and at least read by the admin who will eventually decide on the AfD. But instead of letting the argument stand or fail on its own merits, Black Kite sweeps in, declares the posters of those arguments sockpuppets, deletes their arguments, and bans the people who posted them.

I feel confident that the goal of the sockpuppet/meatpuppet rule was to prevent mindless ballot box stuffing. I highly doubt the rule was created so administrators would have an easy access, all purpose tool for banning people who made arguments they didn't like. Especially when the reason they don't like them is because they are GOOD ARGUMENTS that could potentially make the final decision go against their wishes (in this case, the deletion of the entry).

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Regarding the Canvassing issue: This is just another example of the aforementioned cabal protecting its turf. If the situation wasn't so disgusting, I'd be able to laugh about how the Wiki community has cleverly placed roadblocks all over the place to make sure only HARD CORE members of their community will ever have a say in things. It reminds me of when I practiced law. Lawyers make sure the law is crafted in such a way that it is nearly impossible for a non-lawyer to do much of anything. The fill it with ridiculous terms like "fee simple subject to a condition subsequent, with a springing reverter", and "Res ipsa loquitur" instead of just "the thing speaks for itself." The system is cooked from the beginning, and it is a shame Wikipedia has used the same tactic.

The only reason to make a big deal about canvassing is if you KNOW your entire case boils down to keeping outside opinions OUT, and only letting your own little cabal of cronies have a say in the matter.

Did the people who showed up as a result of this thread spam the AfD? No.

Did they deface or vandalize the page? No.

Did they present quality arguments that were 100% on topic, and in some cases directly cited Wikipedia rules and policies? Yes.

So why are Black Kite, Mendaliv, Crossmr, and others stamping their feet and throwing a temper tantrum about "canvassing" and "sockpuppets"?

SIMPLE: They do not want opposing arguments to be heard. They do not want the "other side" to even have a seat at the table. They only want their arguments presented, with a bunch of people patting them on the back, telling them how awesome they are, and adding dorky little badges to their user page.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

We have to have some way of cutting off a slew of prejudiced votes, otherwise we end up with a strong list of keeps every time this happens, and this is not fair. Of course there are going to be people dedicated who want to vote, but the amount of them that are only coming on a site's advice cannot be managed, simply because the influx means we are unbalanced in terms of a ratio between editors and people who are there to express an opinion based on a post they read on a forum.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Well, keep in mind that Wikipedia is not a democracy. Sheer number of votes isn't going to do it. That has been stated time and again. What will do it is good arguments and logical reasoning as well as people going to cite the rules of Wikipedia. Notice that when someone is banned, not only is their vote struck, all of their input is collapsed. Many of the arguments that have been collapsed are not inflammatory nor are they unreasonable. Additionally, they are on point and explain Wikipedia's policies more fully rather than in the cursory and superior manner that is used by some of the administrators and long-time editors.

There's been no spam. The problem is that there's no way of cutting off a slew of prejudiced votes from someone going to rally the administrators and people on #wikipedia. You can see the examples of this from many of the logs of #wikipedia. How is it not prejudiced and meatpuppeting to go and rally the Wikipedia community against an article as opposed to opening a topic this forum? Please keep in mind also, that this is now our only recourse to even have a discussion on this issue. Almost everyone who had a strong say in this has been banned, ridiculed or summarily dismissed. When you leave people no options to actually deal with this in Wikipedia, it's no surprise that they go somewhere else where they're less likely to be bullied and can discuss this without being buried in Wiki-politics. Where else can people turn for help or advice? Definitely not at the place they were originally being abused.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Hi.

I'm on Wikipedia.

Neurolysis asked me to take a look at this thread.

A "reliable source", from my understanding, is a source that conducts independent, in-depth reviews of news items. The source generally has the resources to be able to purchase any necessary materials and/or items needed, as well as the prestige to be allowed special access to products or events. The Associated Press is a good example of a mainstream source that many, if not most, English newspapers, radio stations and TV stations use for their stories. For a reliable source more suited as an example for the topic at hand, IGN is a good choice, as they often obtain access to products such as video game consoles before the general public, and again, many, many other websites quote their stories.

Conflict of interest does not mean you don't have anything to do with a subject. If it did, nearly all editors on Wikipedia would be in violation of it, since I cannot imagine anyone voluntarily writing about a subject they did not like. In this case, the accusations of COI could possibly be somewhat justified, but I don't think so. If you were trying to get an article about this website, that would be one thing, but you aren't. So, I don't know where that came from.


I don't think that's the case here.

To draw an analogy, imagine a local election for mayor of a small town, small enough that pretty much everyone knows everyone else, or at least knows who they are. Now, imagine that anyone, anyone at all, can vote - with no residence or time requirements, and all ballots are submitted via postal mail.

How would the residents of that town react if suddenly many, many votes came in from people they had never heard of before, all voting for the same candidate? Does it seem unreasonable that at least some of the town's residents would assume that the votes were coming from one person, especially if some of the letters were postmarked in the same place?

I think that explains why some of you were blocked for being "sockpuppets". As far as the people who were blocked for being "meatpuppets", I do not know why Black Kite blocked accounts that were not implicated in the CheckUser report. This, to me, seems unnecessary, since as far as I can tell, none of you were vandalizing; you merely giving your opinion on the deletion request.


That is unfortunately correct, and even though I am an administrator on Wikipedia, I cannot just go around and unblock all of your accounts, due to policies in place there. I can, however, look at the circumstances surrounding your blocks and bring the case to the blocking administrator(s). If you will give me the names of your accounts on Wikipedia, I will do my best to get you unblocked, since I do not believe you are attempting to disrupt Wikipedia or to stack votes.


As far as the page's deletion itself goes, from what I can see, unfortunately, the game does not appear to be notable enough for inclusion. From :

If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article.

From my own research, I do not think that Threshold meets this criterion. I was able to find one independent article on Google News about the game. It is already included as a citation in the article. Other than that, I did not find much else. If any of you know of other sources, I would be happy to add them to the article, and to make a note on the deletion request saying that the article has established notability.


I think those were the main issues, other than the problem of "The Cabal". It is, from my experience, nearly impossible to conclusively disprove a cabal's existence, since a group of people with similar thoughts will appear to be acting in coordination, even if they are not. (I will note that I cannot prove that they are not acting in concert, I just think it very unlikely) I do not relish the prospect of adopting an unprovable position, so if it is all the same to you, I would prefer not to comment on those discussions.

If there is something else significant that I missed, please tell me.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Thank you. :)

I agree IGN is a reliable source in the gaming world, but here's the thing: The Mud Connector and this site (TMS) are two of the "IGNs of MUDs." Creators and administrators of muds would frequently announce or release code on those sites before they were available in their actual games. TMC in particular had, at one time, a full time staff that (among other things) independently reviewed games. Administrators could not request or solicit reviews. TMC chose who they would review.

You can look at those sites now and say "they aren't significant enough", but that is a very unfair way to judge them. TMC in particular was one of the first big gaming sites on the internet. It is older than most (if not all) of the sites you might list now as "reliable sources on gaming."

As Wikipedia policy states, . With that in mind, there was definitely a time when TMC, TMS, TMJ, GameCommandos, CNET Gamecenter, and other sites were extremely notable. Heck, CNET Gamecenter merged into what is now Gamespot.

That is what I always thought as well. But some people wield that COI link like a bludgeon, which is frustrating in the extreme.

Right there you hit on one of the HUGE problems with Wikipedia right now. There is a huge bias of editors towards people that "pretty much everyone knows." That's a problem - not a small problem, a giant problem. On a lot of issues, especially one about a niche topic like MUDs, the people who care and are knowledgeable about MUDs are not likely to also be huge Wikipedia contributors. People involved in MUDs spend a lot (if not most or all) of their free time working on or playing their MUD(s), just as the heavy duty Wikipedia people spend enormous amounts of free time working on their Wikipedia entries.

The difference is, in the MUD community you don't get tossed on your ear because "everyone doesn't know you." We welcome people in happily. Right now, the Wikipedia community shuns you in an extreme way if "everyone doesn't know you."

Perhaps people in the Wikipedia community can look to the MUD community for a little lesson in how to embrace new potential members of their community. I can tell you from experience, as huge and important as Wikipedia seems right now, that's pretty much how MUDs were 10 years ago. Imagine 10 years from now someone has a bigger, better way of recording historical information online (perhaps Google's ). How would you feel if you were there trying to make sure Wikipedia was remembered, and the KNOL people said "Sorry, you aren't important enough." But more important than how you would feel, how ridiculous would that be? There is no doubt that at the present time, Wikipedia is a major part of the internet. 10 years ago, MUDs were at least that major.

That isn't really what is happen though, is it? I mean how many additional people showed up. 5? And all of the people who DID show up shared extremely on point arguments that raised aspects of Wikipedia policy that were being totally ignored up to that point.

A better analogy would be people showing up to a Town Hall meeting, and even though you did not recognize them, they raised extremely valid and educational points. The input of those people might save the town from making a very bad decision.

That is why I can only conclude that Black Kite was doing it for extremely personal reasons. He simply wants to "win the AfD", perhaps to help out friends of his like Mendaliv. Or perhaps he just has an extreme dislike for outsiders that "not everyone knows" and wants to make sure they are run out of town.

Thank you. I will send that to you in a PM.


That's part of the problem, and that speaks directly to Milawe's point. The sources that establish Threshold, or any other MUD's notability, are places like TMC and TMS. There have been many other sources in the past, but most of them no longer exist.

And who is going to write about MUDs nowadays? There is no money in it, so you aren't going to see articles about MUDs in PC Gamer or Computer Games Magazine.

The fact that Computer Games Magazine mentioned a MUD at all is *huge*. Considering they get absolutely zero ad revenue from it, that speaks volumes about how big of a mention that was. Instead of it being discarded as too minor of a mention, the fact that a major PC gaming publication would even write about a MUD nowadays should bear some relevance.

I don't want to turn this into an argument for the validity of Threshold's entry, so I will only add a few more points. There are factual things that establish notability as well. The fact that it has operated for 12 years is significant. That makes it more than twice as old as Wikipedia, for example. It is significantly older than most major sites on the internet. The fact that 300,000 characters have been made is pretty significant as well. Unless you want to argue that no MUDs are notable enough to have an entry, then muds like Threshold (and many others) are certainly notable enough for inclusion. To say otherwise is to deny an extremely significant and major part of internet and online gaming history.

Also, I think getting excessively bogged down on the concept of notability is not the right way to go. There are numerous Wikipedia policies and axioms that very specifically state notability is not ultimate qualification for an article. Concepts like "Wikipedia is not paper", "Valid Content would be Deleted", and "Obscure Content isn't Harmful" are three examples. And perhaps most importantly, notability is not listed anywhere in the deletion policy. So this obsession with notability is probably not even the appropriate way to make the decision.

Sometimes that is true, but I would say in this situation it is extremely obvious that they are working in concert and have been for some time.

Look at the timing of the AfD. They waited until they got all the significant contributors to the article banned before they submitted the AfD. There's no excuse for that. That is a blatant and obvious piece of evidence that speaks to their motives and their collaboration.

Look at the way they routinely banned almost EVERYONE possible from the discussion, even when there was no spam or any other violation of policy. As far as I know, every person who voted KEEP was either banned for sock/meatpuppetry, or accused of sock/meatpuppetry. That is such an extreme abuse of power there has to be a reason for it.

Arguments for KEEPing the entry were repeatedly deleted, squelched, crossed out, or put in a "garbage box" at the bottom. If the point of an AfD is to discuss the validity of the deletion request, then the arguments themselves should at least be left for people to read.

Thanks again for stopping in to discuss this with us here. Sadly, our community has been chased off with torches and pitchforks by 2 or 3 Wikipedia members with the power to impose their will on all of us.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

I don't care about Threshold, therefore this does not matter.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Kinda sounds like a few MUDs I tried once :-P