[Milawe]

"Beginning research." Almost all research begins with a list of citations which CAN and often does include encyclopedic research. Encyclopedias (like Wikipedia, imo) is a great place to START your research, but Wikipedia is not acceptable as a citation in even initial research. Citations to encyclopedias are used for reference and often leads to PRIMARY sources, which is the crux of most research papers. (Scientific papers almost always go beyond just primary resources as well.) So, no need to get your panties in a bunch!

WP:V deals with way more than just establishing existence. It actually goes far beyond that, so there are no worries that your version of Wikipedia ever existed. And as you can see by the arguments about notability on that AfD in discussion, notability itself is a very blurred concept. For example, the 1st man in space is extremely notable. The 2nd one is probably also very notable. What about the 3,239th one? I would say it was still notable, but others could easily say that it's not. Deletions based on notability can easily degenerate into exactly what this one did.

I'd say that this argument would belong on Wikipedia's talk page for Threshold RPG's article, especially since what remains now has been gutted and multiple references removed. It's hard to even keep track of everything that occurred there. Documented material was more than once removed. Whether you think some of that material was notable or not is also a matter of opinion. On one hand, you could say it's not notable because in the grand scheme of things, most people don't know jack about mudding. On the other hand, you could say that perideridia americana is not notable because most people in America don't know jack about it. However, if you talk to a botanist or most any other scientist, they would probably say that that plant is notable. Though, no one really has an axe to grind against cute little perideridia americana, so its notability probably would never come into question. (Except me since I got poison ivy studying it.)

That's obviously true, but in this case, there wasn't "lack of any documentation."

According to Wikipedia's rules, notability doesn't expire. Arguing that muds are no longer cutting edge is irrelevant because at one point they were cutting edge along with BBSes. When 3D virtual reality games make MMOs obsolete, that doesn't mean that World of Warcraft won't still be notable.

If that were the only citation, then probably not. If you're mentioned in multiple newspapers, more than one online magazine and several websites, maybe that'd be a different story. I'll bet you that some of the more popular phenomenons probably do have a Wikipedia entry, though. And you can probably find some extremely obscure ones, too. It was notable enough for SOMEONE to go make a Wikipedia entry about it. (That doesn't mean it will survive an AfD, though!)

The problem is that there's really no entity that is Wikipedia. The AfD was actually proposed by individuals, and Wikipedia is composed of many, many other individuals. Wikipedia is not "correcting a policy error". The outcry, apparent if you've looked at the topic at all, is because an inordinate number of people voting to KEEP the entry were getting banned, leaving no way to discuss the policy or improve the article. Further outcry resulted when all sources for MUDs were deemed irrelevant by some in order to support the deletion of one MUDs' entry. Wikipedia policy actually states that no article should be removed on notability issues alone and that improvements to the articles should be made if at all possible first. (An effort made extremely difficult with constant reversions and removals of links and sources and quick bans.)

Anyway, I have no interest in getting into another discussion about Wikipedia policy especially when it's not on Wikipedia and won't really do a bit of good. I might be misreading your post, but you seem kind of bent out of shape that MUDs exist on Wikipedia. I'm not sure why since Wikipedia has the ability to far outshine any encyclopedia since it has no limits based on physical space, and Wikipedia's guideline and policies as well as Jim Wales press release statements seem to indicate that that was the original goal for Wikipedia. In the end, though, Wikipedia, like muds, continues to evolve. There may well be a time when fancruft, fictional characters, books, movies, and games are removed from Wikipedia completely.

Whether Threshold's page stays or goes will not the affect the game in the slightest bit. Threshold has never received a single user from Wikipedia, but the issue has grown far beyond Threshold's entry.

In the end, you've always seen to be a proponent of MUDs coming together to form a third party review site. Perhaps this will be an impetus.