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Old 01-04-2009, 10:47 PM   #48
Threshold
Legend
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Home MUD: Threshold RPG
Posts: 1,260
Threshold will become famous soon enough
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.
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