[prof1515]

An encyclopedia is not an accepted source for any research. You might look over an article to find references to actual source material but under no circumstances is the encyclopedic article itself a source for research because it is neither a primary nor a secondary source. It's an encyclopedia, a summary of the results from the research of others. Any student above the high school level should know that (hell, even high school students should know that).

Existance is irrelevant. I can prove the gas station down the road exists. Notability doesn't merely determine the length of an entry. Are you saying that Wikipedia believed that an article on the clay bowl I made in the first grade was acceptable so long as I could produce proof it existed? Somehow, I don't think Wikipedia EVER intended such an interpretation, even if their policies were "originally" worded poorly (assuming they were).

There appeared to be several good reasons for deletion. A lack of documentation to prove assertions made in the articles would be grounds to question the suitability of the content of the article. The example given, Threshold's article, lacked any documented material and was filled with irrelevant and inappropriate material for an encyclopedic article. Take out the material that shouldn't be there and there was nothing left in the article. To call it a stub would have been too generous. That leads to the question of notability when so little valid information on the subject exists.

The lack of any documentation to prove notability would therfore be a perfectly acceptable reason for deleting. Encyclopedias, even a user-generated and edited one like Wikipedia, are not telephone directories or grocery lists. There are very few, if any MUDs in existance which constitute a notable subject. There aren't any which are innovative, cutting-edge technology which is transforming the world (even if MUDs themselves led to other developments, the individual games themselves don't). Their cultural impact is practically nil. There really are no legitimate third-party sources which support notability of any MUDs.

Being mentioned in a magazine or newspaper article itself isn't enough to really denote notability. If that was the case, every dip**** who gets a mentioned on the news for owning a two-headed turtle or having found a pretzel shaped like the profile of Elvis would be "notable". It's not however.

If Wikipedia didn't make that clear, then changes in their policy and deletion of articles is a perfectly acceptable way of doing that. Either way, the articles should be deleted because the subjects of them are not worthy of encyclopedic note. That's what Wikipedia is doing. So why are people complaining and crying conspiracy? There is no reason to protest or cry foul if Wikipedia is correcting a policy error (assuming it existed in the first place) in their oversight of content.

Take care,

Jason