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

Threshold · 01-11-2009, 04:06 AM

Yeah, I don't really know why that keeps happening either. Frankly, I'm pretty much fed up with defending its notability. Where there's smoke, there's fire. If a MUD has been noted in 20 or so magazines, newspapers, and web sites, and if its deletion sparks a gigantic news story on 20+ blogs, multiple gaming news sites, etc. the whole notability argument is absurd and moot. I certainly have no interest in rehashing it here for the umpteenth time.

Here is what I mostly take from this, as far as what we need to do:

1) Claw, kick, and scratch to find a way to establish TMC and TMS as reliable sources. They don't have to be internet juggernauts for that to be the case. There are countless examples of acceptable, reliable sources in Wikipedia (or elsewhere) that are far less "significant" than TMC and TMS. I don't know the exact process for establishing this, but I believe it begins with finding noteworthy journalism about the two sites, and to somehow document the methods they use for writing reviews (in the case of TMC's staff reviews) or compiling data. For Wikipedia in particular, they have a process where you can pseudo-officially have a source declared reliable. If at some point we can really shore up these sources, with tons of information and citations, we should move forward on that and see if the Wikipedian powers that be will be amenable to that declaration.

2) Every MUD administrator needs to take it upon him or herself to RECORD every single mention their MUD gets in any type of newspaper, magazine, web site, etc. For off-site mentions, try to get a letter from the organization verifying the appearance of the article, and save that along with a screenshot of any online version. Find out if the site that mentions your MUD is blocking Archive.org from saving it (for some insane reason, TMJ created a robots.txt file to block the Internet Archive. Ugh).

3) Court mainstream media attention as much as you can. If you do something news worthy, contact any news agency, magazine, or web site you think might find it interesting or newsworthy. I have found that a lot of news organizations love to write about something in a game if it reflects a hot political issue in real life.

4) If you get a chance to give a speech, write an article, or do anything of that sort where you could specifically discuss either your favorite MUD, MUDs in general, TMC, or TMS, seize the opportunity. If you actually write for a newspaper, magazine, etc. then do whatever you can to get an article published. Try to get as much substantial information included as possible. A full paragraph or two is better than a single sentence.

All of these methods have two additional, very positive effects outside of any Wikipedia benefits:

01-11-2009, 04:06 AM	#164
Threshold Legend Join Date: Apr 2002 Home MUD: Threshold RPG Posts: 1,260	Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned. Yeah, I don't really know why that keeps happening either. Frankly, I'm pretty much fed up with defending its notability. Where there's smoke, there's fire. If a MUD has been noted in 20 or so magazines, newspapers, and web sites, and if its deletion sparks a gigantic news story on 20+ blogs, multiple gaming news sites, etc. the whole notability argument is absurd and moot. I certainly have no interest in rehashing it here for the umpteenth time. Here is what I mostly take from this, as far as what we need to do: 1) Claw, kick, and scratch to find a way to establish TMC and TMS as reliable sources. They don't have to be internet juggernauts for that to be the case. There are countless examples of acceptable, reliable sources in Wikipedia (or elsewhere) that are far less "significant" than TMC and TMS. I don't know the exact process for establishing this, but I believe it begins with finding noteworthy journalism about the two sites, and to somehow document the methods they use for writing reviews (in the case of TMC's staff reviews) or compiling data. For Wikipedia in particular, they have a process where you can pseudo-officially have a source declared reliable. If at some point we can really shore up these sources, with tons of information and citations, we should move forward on that and see if the Wikipedian powers that be will be amenable to that declaration. 2) Every MUD administrator needs to take it upon him or herself to RECORD every single mention their MUD gets in any type of newspaper, magazine, web site, etc. For off-site mentions, try to get a letter from the organization verifying the appearance of the article, and save that along with a screenshot of any online version. Find out if the site that mentions your MUD is blocking Archive.org from saving it (for some insane reason, TMJ created a robots.txt file to block the Internet Archive. Ugh). 3) Court mainstream media attention as much as you can. If you do something news worthy, contact any news agency, magazine, or web site you think might find it interesting or newsworthy. I have found that a lot of news organizations love to write about something in a game if it reflects a hot political issue in real life. 4) If you get a chance to give a speech, write an article, or do anything of that sort where you could specifically discuss either your favorite MUD, MUDs in general, TMC, or TMS, seize the opportunity. If you actually write for a newspaper, magazine, etc. then do whatever you can to get an article published. Try to get as much substantial information included as possible. A full paragraph or two is better than a single sentence. All of these methods have two additional, very positive effects outside of any Wikipedia benefits: