Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post - In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

Milawe · 01-06-2009, 01:33 PM

I feel that the base of the problem here is that random people are getting to determine notability in a field that is not their expertise. Notability becomes a personal opinion and sliding scale, which, ultimately, is probably why it is prohibited to be used as the only determination for deleting an article.

I'll try to illustrate to you why the notability argument is such a problem. The average person on Wikipedia probably couldn't tell you what pedomorphism is without looking it up on the internet. It, in fact, only gets approximately 2400 hits on google as opposed to the 167,000 hits for Threshold RPG or the 289,000 hits you receive for God Wars. (Yes, very aware of WP:GHIT. Irrelevent to the point.) However, if you talked to a geneticist or an ecologist, they would most likely say that pedomorphism is a very notable concept in biology and is key to many theories involving evolution. Now, should a random editor get to determine whether or its entry is notable and its sources are notable, especially since most of the primary sources for pedomorphism does not exist online? Should a random editor get to vote on the notability of pedomorphism? In addition, should a random editor get to fly in the face of people who are recognized experts in the field?

Is notability simply a popularity vote? If so, where does that leave things like concepts in quantum physics that most of us couldn't even begin to understand but are key to the field? Is notability objective, subjective or semi-objective? Does someone get to come by and say, "Not notable" simply because he doesn't want it to be or simply doesn't understand it? That is a very dangerous precedent to set.

Now, obviously, then we come to the question how big can a relevant field be before it gets "experts"? 100 people? 1,000 people? 10,000 people? I'm not really sure. Over 250,000 characters have been created on Threshold alone, and I'm sure the numbers are much higher for some of the older and bigger muds who have never been to Threshold. (We're still counting and are fully aware that some of these are spammers and multis.) That does not seem to be an insignificant number of people and can surely establish us as a genre.

01-06-2009, 01:33 PM	#95
Milawe Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: USA Home MUD: Threshold RPG Home MUD: Stash Home MUD: Archons of Avenshar Posts: 653	Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned. I feel that the base of the problem here is that random people are getting to determine notability in a field that is not their expertise. Notability becomes a personal opinion and sliding scale, which, ultimately, is probably why it is prohibited to be used as the only determination for deleting an article. I'll try to illustrate to you why the notability argument is such a problem. The average person on Wikipedia probably couldn't tell you what pedomorphism is without looking it up on the internet. It, in fact, only gets approximately 2400 hits on google as opposed to the 167,000 hits for Threshold RPG or the 289,000 hits you receive for God Wars. (Yes, very aware of WP:GHIT. Irrelevent to the point.) However, if you talked to a geneticist or an ecologist, they would most likely say that pedomorphism is a very notable concept in biology and is key to many theories involving evolution. Now, should a random editor get to determine whether or its entry is notable and its sources are notable, especially since most of the primary sources for pedomorphism does not exist online? Should a random editor get to vote on the notability of pedomorphism? In addition, should a random editor get to fly in the face of people who are recognized experts in the field? Is notability simply a popularity vote? If so, where does that leave things like concepts in quantum physics that most of us couldn't even begin to understand but are key to the field? Is notability objective, subjective or semi-objective? Does someone get to come by and say, "Not notable" simply because he doesn't want it to be or simply doesn't understand it? That is a very dangerous precedent to set. Now, obviously, then we come to the question how big can a relevant field be before it gets "experts"? 100 people? 1,000 people? 10,000 people? I'm not really sure. Over 250,000 characters have been created on Threshold alone, and I'm sure the numbers are much higher for some of the older and bigger muds who have never been to Threshold. (We're still counting and are fully aware that some of these are spammers and multis.) That does not seem to be an insignificant number of people and can surely establish us as a genre.